A Brazilian Diary

Ute Craemer

April 1980

Recently someone asked me: "Why do you
keep this diary?" I was taken aback, because I have been writing for so
long about how I live. "To vindicate yourself?" he asked. No.
"To attest to your work?" No. - Why? Yes, Why?

Much
of it I wrote as letters, to my mother, so that she could participate in my
life with the favela children. Then I often wrote about the children
themselves. Often they were difficult children, who had been severely buffeted
by life. In daily activity we often rub against each other the wrong way. So I
wrote in order to maintain a distance so I would not be seeing them only
superficially; to have an insight into what really lives under that crust of
revolt, the rebellion of the spirit which tries to realize itself.

And I wrote about the destiny of individual
families. I sat in their huts and suddenly a mother would start to tell me
about her life on the land: too little food, no doctor, no school, giving birth
without assistance, the move to Sao Paulo, etc. I had the feeling that all
these destinies which are lived out in Brazil in the thousands and probably in
the whole world in a similar way, that such destinies shouldn't be left to
expire unheard, that they should somehow be preserved, because it is the
destiny of thousands who can't make themselves heard in the tumult of world
events. Only when someone breaks out violently in robbery or murder do they
make the headlines.

Human
beings who are driven from the land to the cities. Children. Wherever you go --
on the streets, at the market, in parks, in museums, in schools -- the hoards
of children are everywhere. (What a contrast to Germany with its many vigorous,
active elderly people.) What kind of souls are these who incarnate in such weak
bodies and in such squalid conditions? What meaning is behind the fact that
they must preserve their human dignity through all this misery, or lose it?

I
wrote what I saw, also to clarify to myself the reason for our work and the
spirit from which such activity springs. Later, when we inaugurated the
escolinha, and more and more volunteers came to help us, I found that these
diary sketches helped them understand the children and adults in the favela.
Therefore the sketches made the rounds amongst the co-workers. Someone asked me
if I had thought about publishing them. No, not really. But perhaps it would
make sense, perhaps it would encourage some to make their own problems less
important and open themselves to others. But then it is also necessary to see
how you must wrestle with yourself, how one has doubts and overcomes these
doubts. It's not enough to see only the visible side of the work, but also
one's own development. It costs something to admit this.

During
the past few months some young people, experienced in development work,
approached us offering to help. A girl came and taught some children to weave.
It was a great success. We had always intended to do this, but never had the
time nor the courage to start. Then she came and started the ball rolling. At
the moment weave-itis has broken out, from kindergarten to the older boys --
everybody weaves. Shortly before she traveled to Germany we had a longer
conversation.

"Why
do you do social work, and since when?" she asked. "When I realized
that all these people, all these children and youths want self-realization,
exactly as we want it. Previously I saw only the poverty and its side effects:
filth, sickness, hovels, etc. At a certain moment I understood that they are
also human beings who, like me, are looking for a path in life, who want to
fulfil their destiny -- and not merely survive, not merely stay alive. Mostly
this seeking for the meaning of life is suffocated by the need to earn money,
already in childhood. When I really felt this in my inner being, not only
theoretically but through and through, I began to put my own life in the
background in order to concern myself with these people, not only outwardly,
but inwardly as well."

"I'm
happy that I could work here, and I now know better what I will do later
on." I thought: perhaps we should tell many people, especially young
people, what we can do in life.

Another
said: "I admire your patience." That embarrassed me, for I may have
patience in the long run, but how often have I lost my patience where the
little things are concerned.

And
yet another: "What about your own feelings, sex, your wish to have your
own children?"

Gradually
it dawned on me, and I should also write it, that I have exactly the same
needs, the same despairs, the same wish to find myself as all the others. That
the temptation always exists to live for myself, that I also love, live,
suffer, with the only difference that I realize I have no right to place these
doubts and feelings of hopelessness in the center of my life as long as there
are children who live in slums, as long as there are children who work in mines
and practically never see the light of day.

May 1980

I am reading Rudolf Steiner's "Knowledge
of the Higher Worlds".So
high-sounding, but it was written for daily life. I realize how important it is
now, when I am no longer surrounded only by children, and when the escolinha is
becoming a larger organism in which adults work and must understand each other.
Adults from various countries with differing social and educational
backgrounds, black, brown, white. They are all here to do something in the
favela. The motives which bring them also differ: compassion for the children,
an escape from their own problems, the need to do something beyond the merely
personal. All justifiable motives. And all these people must be brought under
one umbrella so that they can put their personal affairs in the background.

By
occult training one imagines something very mysterious. But it is really quite
normal, something through which you can deal better with daily life. "I
must develop in myself the ability to let the impressions of the outside world
affect me in a manner which only I determine." For example, to remove the
wounding barb from angry words; to transform impatience into useful observation
during waiting times, etc.

"Especially
important for the occult student is the way in which he listens to another
person." Silencing his own being, absorbing what the other has to say,
without sympathetic or antipathetic comments. Dominating his own feelings,
willing, even, to rethink his thoughts in the interest of objectivity. To let
the other speak out, listening carefully, understanding why he is as he is,
fighting one's own prejudices in respect to so-called national characteristics
or educational levels. That means to take someone inwardly seriously, who only
went to primary school, who perhaps only learned to read as an adult and is
black to boot.

Surely
it's hard to discover the human core under all those layers. That's why I was
so glad when a volunteer recently told me: "I don't even notice anymore if
someone is black or white. You can see through the outer appearances."

Is
it an exaggeration if we don't only try to find work for a young person, but
also try to see that it's a humane activity? Shouldn't we limit ourselves to
insuring that the basic conditions for survival are met, without worrying about
whether or not they correspond to human needs? The eternal question: Should we
help a few children as much as possible, or help many children a little?
Quality or quantity. In any case, I'm not in favor of quick courses of 40 to 50
hours in which the young are taught sewing, fabric coloring, knitting,
carpentry, etc. This accomplishes practical proficiency, but the children
aren't really educated. After a few months it may all be forgotten. I always
must think of St. Exupéry's words: "Seul l'esprit qui souffle sur la
glaise peut créer l'Homme." (Only the spirit which breathes over the clay
can create man.)

Maybe
you can get used to filth and poverty in the course of life, because you have
no choice and you can't get excited about it every day anew. When we go into
the favela as neophytes, it's what immediately attracts our attention and
awakens our compassion or our disgust: the rivulets of indefinable water, the
outhouses, the rats that scurry by and whose bite-marks you sometimes see on
small children's' ears; or the smell of the earth evenings, when all smells
become stronger and when the good smell of damp earth no longer rises, but one
of filth and excrement. One wants to change all that because it seems
impossible to live that way. But the more you occupy yourself with the people
and the favela in general, the more it seems that something else is more
important: the impossibility of developing into a real human being under such
conditions, or at least the terrible difficulty of developing what has been
implanted in us as potentiality and ability. When I see a child, who with
shining eyes for the first time reverently digs up a beautiful stone, I ask
myself: What happened to this brilliance and reverence in the men who only
drink, beat their wives and play pool? Where did this coarseness come from? I
know that it's not only a favela problem and isn't necessarily related only to
rich and poor, rather with education and values. But I believe that it's
especially difficult under the favela conditions to preserve the human essence
under the crusts of hardening and truncation.

What
depresses me most is that these people are also born with rich possibilities
and that this wealth of life crumbles away year by year. They are so limited,
so one-sided, that hardly anything remains of what Juracy, Arnaldo, Mario and
others might have become.

In
Germany you see many pictures of slum areas, you read articles with statistics
about the difference between rich and poor countries. But the pictures and
statistics touch us only superficially until we inwardly realize that they are
human beings like us. That they don't only want to survive, but they need to
realize themselves just as we do. That they are singular individuals, beings
who want to live out their personal destinies. Once you really feel this, that
these people are seeking a way, just as we are, in their work, in love, in life
in general, then the fact that they are impeded by the extremely difficult
circumstances in which they grow up doesn't leave you in peace.Now I see more clearly that the material
circumstances must change, for they are the basis of human dignity, but they
are only the prerequisite for what is essential: the path to becoming truly
human. Somehow we must try to work on two levels: to improve the material
conditions and, at the same time, to think how to awaken the spiritual element
in the people. I believe it is wrong to think that we should first occupy
ourselves with improving the material circumstances, and only afterwards worry
about the spiritual, the human element. I think about the well dressed, well
situated, sated people in Europe. But fulfilment as human beings isn't achieved
there either. I never before had such a feeling of compassion as during my last
trip to Europe for those well dressed people who have everything a favelado
could desire -- but they read only the trashiest newspaper. And what is
accomplished? The basis has been achieved, but how is it used?

Raimundo

I don't know much about Raimundo. He's about
35, lives in the favela, is unmarried, has two wives, one in the favela and the
other somewhere else. He has no children though, because he has a serious case
of syphilis. He spent several years in jail because he killed someone. He is
valente, as his father says. Proud, obstinate, brave -- there is no German word
to correctly express valente.

His
grandfather was a real Indio who hunted in the jungle and ate the animals raw.
His look is sinister, dark, he doesn't smile, speaks in one-syllable words,
pulls his cap far down over his forehead, likes to be well dressed, usually in
black, takes no notice of others. When he's not in the mood, he simply isn't in
the mood. He's his own master, but a master who isn't free. He gives the
impression of a caged predator who has been denied the freedom of the steppes.
Gloomy, taciturn, as though there was a wall around him.

But
he sings. When he speaks he has a breaking voice, but when he sings it becomes
full. It isn't the tone of his voice that makes such an impression however, but
the expression he puts into his songs. Perhaps it's sentimental, but it seems
as if his soul is breaking out of him, out of his body and his failure of a
life.

I
would like to understand what goes on in such a human soul. Recently I saw him
in his hut, alone. We spoke about prison and his life on the land; he told me
about it. I wasn't at all afraid, it didn't occur to me that I was sitting with
a murderer. It was all normal, nothing evil.

What
happens in a human life, inside a man, that he can kill another? Somehow such
people are out of place in the city. In the jungle, on the land, they can live
out their wildness; they can hunt or go to war. In the right place they could
be brave, valente. What can he do with his savagery in the city, on the
assembly line, or as a day-laborer?

A
short while ago Raimundo planted the grass at the escolinha. I told him: Be
careful, these flowers mustn't be harmed. He said: o lirio de Sao Joao, the St.
John lily. I was astonished because it was the first time a Brazilian had named
a Brazilian plant to me. I told him so. He looked up at me and smiled, a ray of
sunshine through thunderclouds. A small break in the wall. The wall is ugly,
stained with robberies and other crimes; but behind it something is hidden that
flashes and shines as it does in other people -- his soul, his destiny. It
reminds me of the fairy tale Snow White and Red Rose -- gold flashes through
the shaggy bear's coat. The bear is redeemed. Who will free this man?

Serginho

Serginho is five years old. Since he was three
he has played in the curve of a paved road and only his guardian angel can have
prevented his being run over.

He's blond, though neither his father nor his
mother is blond. He mostly goes about naked or in pieces of clothing that are
much too big for him and that he drags behind him. His father is dead and his
mother and older sister work in a factory. A nine year-old girl looks after the
little ones. Two brothers of fourteen and thirteen years of age are in reform
school.

Sergio senses when it's time to
prepare himself for kindergarten. He washes superficially at the common water
faucet, hangs on some clothes and moves off in the direction of the
kindergarten. Usually he's one of the first to arrive. On the way he steals a
large flower and gives it to Renate.

Recently
he has been terribly weak with sores all over and a huge boil on his forehead.
I decided to bring him to our ambulatorio. It was Easter and all the children
had received an Easter basket. He gave me one hand and with the other held
tightly onto his Easter basket. We walked slowly - slowly - down the street to
the favela. It was quite pleasant to walk so calmly. Then I thought: What good
will it do if we give him medication from the ambulatorio if no one is there to
see that he takes it regularly. A kind of sanitarium is needed for such rundown
children who have no one at home to care for them, a place where they can
recuperate for a week or so and gain new strength.

The
idea has been born. Now we must see how it can be realized.

The above
is a an excerpt from Ute Craemer’s book, Favela Children, which may be obtained free of charge from Southern Cross Review’s Ebook Library.